I have been hearing about "Magic Cookies" for a while, but what follows is the best description I have seen. I am using the software Cookie Monster on all of the Macs in our lab, and on my personal computer, as I have already been getting junk mail from some of the sites I have visited. Just depends on whether you want people to know where you are going and where you have been. I have not had any problems with it so far. The URL for this information and to download the software (it is e-mail ware)is: http://www.macworld.com/software/IndexSoftware.NewUploads.html Cookie Monster 1.5.1 The following is the description posted on that page: Author: Nicolas Berloquin Needs: Netscape Navigater or Microsoft Explorer Equipment: Macintosh Fee: e-mail ware File size: 9 K The Magic Cookie is a file created by Microsoft Explorer and Netscape Navigator which resides in the preferences folder. It stores data about you, and enables servers you visit to keep track of what you search for and access. They can store this information in their databases for the purpose of marketing analyses and perhaps to generate mailing lists. Besides commercial uses, it's always possible that some servers out there could use this feature to simply record any of your comings and goings and do with the information what they will. We're trying not to sound too Orwellian, but you get the drift... Cookie Monster trashes the MagicCookie file every time it is launched. Install it in your Startup Items folder and Magic Cookie will do the rest. If for some reason you would like to reinstall the Magic Cookie, simply take Cookie Monster out of your Startup Items folder. For more info, you can lookup: http://pobox.com/~nicolas/monster.html http://www.illuminatus.com/cookie_pages/cookie.cgi http://www.bravado.net/rodgers/InterNetNews.html or netscape's technical page on the cookie standard: http://home.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html On Monday, July 29, Henry Rzepa wrote:

Netscape 3, under Options/Network/Protocols allows an alert to be shown if a remote server has asked to write into your "cookie" file. I encountered such a request from e.g. http://structbio.nature.com/1996-April/thesolutionstructureofhivnefre

Of course, you can inspect your cookie file to see what it wrote there (if you can make sense of it), and only the originating server can subsequently make use of this information.

I still find it interesting to know exactly what information is being saved in this file, and what use the remote service makes of it. Some of it is clearly useful (ie version number of the browser you use etc), some of it may prove useful in your browsing of the site (ie you have visited the config page, and there is no reason to go there again) and some may relate to e.g. the user has viewed this article 3 times previously, so let us act upon this information.

I suppose its a bit like the "club" cards in supermarkets, where the supermarket knows more about your weekly shopping habits than you do (I suspect for example that supermarkets must have a pretty good idea of the level of alcoholism in the country. Should your local supermarket alert your doctor if it concludes you are over-doing it for example?)

I strongly suspect that the use of "persistent client states" as they are known, is likely to increase dramatically. Perhaps many of us will not mind if the remote server is keeping a "stateful" record of our browsing. But how would visitors from the commercial side of things view this? Is it part of the "e-world", or should we be concerned.

i am keeping an open mind on this at the moment!

Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY; rzepa@ic.ac.uk; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ (Eudora Pro 3.0)

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Lora F. Burgess Dept. of Chemistry Johns Hopkins University 34th & Charles Sts. Baltimore, MD 21218 (410) 516-7937 ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)